


Our Young Hearts

by lunaseemoony



Series: Foundations [7]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Introspection, Light Angst, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 03:23:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4505829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunaseemoony/pseuds/lunaseemoony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Here I sit, hiding in the infirmary from my own wife because I don't know how to tell her the truth even though by now I should know how. I'm hiding because I'm not ready for this change, because I've never believed in nonsense like fate or destiny yet here they are staring me in the face..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Young Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> While this fic is part of the Foundations 'verse, it is not a part of the Windows series. It stands by itself because it's just outside the strict confines I'd set for Windows. Still, I would strongly suggest reading Foundations and Incoming Tides first, as this takes place after both of those.
> 
> Though I wouldn't say this fic warrants a warning of any sort, I might suggest treading lightly.

I've always thought that Rose was the one that needed her test results delivered gently. I won't _dare_ use the term “only human,” because she's anything but. As far as she's concerned, her anatomy is no marker for her weakness, even when it's failed her in the worst ways; even when it's failed _me_ in the worst ways. “Prepared for anything, me,” she's told me. Oh and I believe it. But it's not always the truth. She puts on a brave front. She assured me she wouldn't be broken if our family could only ever consist of three people; she told me not to worry when we faced her cancer scare; she promised me she lived a full life and that she wasn't scared. Of course she's always been braver than me, telling _me_ not to fret, not to worry. Yet here I sit, sequestering myself not in the console room but in the infirmary with my little handheld monitor staring at her test results, because I'm not ready for the truth.

I told her once that humans wither, decay and die. And yes, I know, I was wrong. I was bitter, and just plain _scared._ I'm allowed once or twice. I had one moment of weakness, and I still wish I could take it back. I was a coward. It took me until the day Alina was born to realize that it wasn't the withering and wilting that I was most afraid of. Can you imagine how many children we might have had if I'd told her right then that I loved her right there in that parking lot, as I was thinking of doing? Ooooh, if Jackie or Jack knew, they'd never let me live down the domestics. A bit late, being concerned about that, I know. Not that I'm concerned. I'm not. I digress.

She wouldn't like me thinking this, I'm certain. For a moment let's just say that Rose was a flower. I won't tell her she might be a rose. But they are brilliant flowers. She'd bloom, yes. But she'd stay that vibrant, shining above the rest, for her lifetime. That's Rose. I wasn't just skimming over a cliché (what a ridiculous word anyway) when I told her that her star in the sky was forever, that it'd always shine. I saw it in her eyes, even when they started wrinkling. I spent years feeling guilty for not showing Rose how much I love her earlier than I did. She spent so many more feeling guilty for aging.

It didn't matter that Alina and fought to make the word “aging” a bit of a taboo. Though the pair of them gained years side by side, Alina did so with the knowledge that someday she'd regenerate. Rose didn't have that luxury, no matter how much she daydreamed about it when she assumed I wasn't paying attention to her thoughts. She's spent these years coping with her guilt over leaving Alina and I alone. Despite my urges against it, she wanted so desperately to grow our family so that even if they were human like her, I'd still get a few more years. When this failed, Alina and I took turns putting a plaster on that bit of guilt. But we could never will it away, even if we promised her we wouldn't be heartbroken.

Despite all this, it was never easier to fight back. To continue to show the woman who owns my hearts that I love her no matter how old she gets is probably the easiest task I've taken up in nearly 1000 years of my life. You don't stop loving someone just because they get older, no matter how many years they have under their belt, no matter how those years decide to show themselves. And wouldn't you know it? I learned this from one Rose Tyler. There's no rule that says you have to act your age. Preposterous idea! And as I sit here, honestly terrified of her test results, remembering this has never been more important.

So I showed her. Or I tried to at least. I did my best. Always finding free moments to sneak away from Alina (not that it was needed once she reached a certain age, but it was fun anyway) to make love in a closet were easy. Reassuring her when she gave me a list of reasons why shagging up against a wall wasn't a good idea for a woman of age 75 was a simple task. Tickling her in the same fashion at age 60 as I did at age 20 was a matter of muscle memory. We did our best to make a challenge of menopause. She still hated it, but I'd call myself a dalek before letting her feel the slightest bit self-conscious about it and her body's changes. When it was good for her I'd make her run right alongside Alina and I, even if she complained about not feeling up to it. Most nights I don't sleep of course. But it never stopped us from staying in the same bed together, making love in that same bed, snuggling in that same bed; every night of every year. The same bed that Rose brought our baby to nurse in, the one she defeated cancer in, the one she grew old in has always been ours together. And though Rose changed over the years, my desire lie with her and feel our hearts beating as one never, ever has.

I faltered once, when we both saw her health turning. We both faltered. Rose tries to be so brave, and she'll always be braver than me. But once, just once my efforts to help her feel young became too much for her. I found her on our ensuite floor in tears looking at our family photo. At first I put on my same old daft face, which only made her crumble further. In the end we both cried ourselves to sleep on the tile floor huddled next to the bathtub. She knows I'm not brave. Maybe that night was the first time she realized I'll never be able to handle the changes, that her health always terrifies me, that I'm not as ready to tackle the domestics as I am the universe. Her age, what she looks like, they'll never matter to me. Not to a man of my years. It's never been what I'm afraid of.

So I'll say it again. Here I sit, _hiding_ in the infirmary from my own wife because I don't know how to tell her the truth even though by now I should know how. I'm hiding because I'm not ready for this change, because I've never believed in nonsense like fate or destiny yet here they are staring me in the face, because -

“Doctor?”

With a squeak, her voice as soft as steamy warm tea, Rose pulls me out of the clutches of the impending news I'm holding to my chest. All I need is one look in her amber eyes, heavy with disappointment to work out that she already knows. There's no time to wonder how, but she has to. She does that shuffling sway she does when she's thinking of how to break it to me as she approaches my tucked away corner. Here I've been reminding myself of everything I've done for her, except talk to her as I promised I always would. I just needed a moment, my moment to let it all sink in. Rose slowly sinks down onto the floor with me. We silently agree to ignore my trembling arm and her intermittent sniffling. _The safe number is changing again,_ I remind myself. I need Rose to tell me that we can do this, and the sooner I accept this little fact as truth, the sooner I can fulfill my vows to always talk to her, about everything. I wrap my arm around her, as tight as I can, fingers digging into her delicate flesh, gathering that little bit of strength. I can't tell if it's too much, or not enough, because she bursts into tears the moment her head lands on my chest.

“I was only curious, Doctor!” Rose muffles into my jacket. “Honest, I wasn't even thinking about it! But I just... I've been feeling off, and I just had to know...”

I steel myself with a deep breath that chokes into a bit of a croak. “Rose... there's some-” I start, but feel something digging into my side where her hand is. I clasp her hand and fish it out of her tightly coiled fingers. I hold up a thin stick of white plastic to the light while pulling on my specs to study it. “Oh Rose... this... this won't work for you anymore. It's meant for human use. Not compatible with your body chemistry. Not remotely. Not anymore.”

Rose's sniffing and hiccuping slows to a gentle stop as she raises her head from my chest. I chuck the offending piece of plastic across the room. The primitive bit of human tech is completely useless; we've never had luck with it. Can't even call it technology, really. Otherwise I might have said halfway across the TARDIS she was looking at the same test. Only mine is accurate.

"I've got it right here," I sigh as I pick up the handheld I'd stashed under the gurney when Rose entered the infirmary. I sit it in her lap to let her interpret the results herself.

Rose's eyes narrow and tighten the longer she studies the image before her. She gives me a sideways questioning glare only once before her lips turn to a frown. "Why's it... Doctor, it's split. Why is it split like that? It's not supposed to look like that, right? Is that why you've been hiding away in here for so long? Figuring out how to tell me?"

"A half hour isn't that long. And _they_ are supposed to be split."

The monitor slides to the floor with a little clatter as Rose shoots up, untangling herself from me to give me that patented Rose Tyler deadpan. " _They_? You mean Gallifreyans don't... that's not one...?"

"No, we don't. And yes _they_. Two."

Rose threads her fingers with mine and we fall into silence. I can feel her spending it searching me for clues, pounding at the barriers of my consciousness. She hasn't mastered controlling her breathing so it picks up when she realizes I'm shutting her out. Her panic pricks me all up my arms until I hiss as I meet her dark doe eyes. If I can't share with her, then something must be wrong, she's thinking. We wouldn't be married for three quarters of a century if I could get away with this. Rose takes my other hand and my eyes fall, along with the wall I'd put up for her. All it takes is that gaze of hers. Who else can have eyes as fiery and passionate as a burning sun, yet gentle and warm like a newborn child?

Newborn. Child.

She leaps through the rubble of my crumbling wall before I can build it back up again, latching on to those thoughts. I know she has it when I hear her twin hearts racing triumphantly. She hasn't learned to control them yet, either. I don't think I ever want her to. Is it selfish if I don't want to teach her, so I can hold on to my old Rose, my first Rose, for longer? She tears right through this distraction to find the issue at hand, the one shaking my hands in hers, the one pouting my lip.

"You're afraid," Rose announces in her honey soft voice, wearing her disappointment on her sleeves.

At first I think it's this that has her hands falling from mine, and I wouldn't blame her. She braces herself against the gurney so she can unbutton her denims and snake her hand under her knickers. Just a little smile tugs at her full lips. And it only grows, even when she nips at it with her teeth. It's like she has to investigate just what I could possibly be afraid of. Rose could be miles away from me for this, halfway across the universe, as she greets her growing children for the first time. Can they feel, beneath those few superficial layers of flesh between them, how excited and smitten their mother is already? She knows nothing more about them than that there are two of them and they're ours. Our babies. But for her that's enough. She doesn't need any more. I'll never, ever discount how clever Rose is. It's a matter of how she uses it. And for her, knowing as much as I do, the simple fact that they're our unborn children is enough for her to love and protect them.

"Come on then, Doctor," Rose beckons. She's got that smooth smile, lacking any sort of malice, sarcasm, or disappointment. She wriggles on the tile floor coaxing her bum out of her tight denims, and slides down her knickers after. "You know you want to, even if you're frightened."

She never really wiggles her fingers at me, just an open palm that I always want to sink into, which of course I do. She's clever, as always, my wife. If I touch them (or try to, at least), speak to them, give them each a little kiss, I have to acknowledge them. They'll exist. Oh, but I can't resist. I can't. You haven't lived until you've pressed your ear to your beloved's womb and heard up close the life she brings to her unborn children. In a few weeks' time it'll be more than just her hearts slowly strumming a gentle lullaby for her womb. I can imagine us staying here on the cold floor, curled up with one another as we listen and wait for it to happen, the addition of four little hearts. I could probably rest my head here forever, Rose's little thicket of curls teasing my cheek as I stare up into her reassuring gaze. It's never changed, even when I let her see just how frightened I am. Her face has changed, from young to old to young again. But those warm eyes, inviting me in always, they never change.

"They keep on trying to separate us," I think aloud.

Memories of Alina's birth and Rose's deaths seep into my thoughts. Canary wharf, my own actions, even to keep her safe, have threatened to tear us asunder. And now these innocent little babies, the newest additions to the most precious beings in the universe, could be yet another force seeking to rip us apart, even if unintentionally. And it wouldn't sound so foolish or paranoid if it was your loved one, I can guarantee you that. It's only been 58 days since I held her in my arms as she died, 36 since our new additions were conceived. Too soon.

"And they never, ever will," Rose asserts. As far as she's concerned, it's as good as a promise.

"Never say never, Rose."

She reaches down to comb her fingers through my hair. "I _will_ say it, and you'll listen, you stubborn old man. First, can you really penalize your own children for existing? You were never afraid of Alina." I open my mouth to speak, but all that comes out is a little croak. Rose hushes me and wipes my eyes. "You love them already. I can see it, feel it. How far along am I? I want to know how long we've got until we can greet them properly. Assuming gestation is the same?"

"Five weeks. 36 days along. Yup, still nine months for... for us," I mumble into her abdomen, idly dropping a kiss there along the way. My children are tiny enough still that this little kiss covers them both. I pout my lip and wrap my arms around her hips. "I held you when your heart stopped. I saw it, both times, Rose. The last time was only..."

"Shh," she presses a finger to my lips and shakes her head. "I've heard enough. That's not going to happen again."

"I need you," I speak against her finger.

"I know. You spent all those years, Doctor, constantly reminding me I'm alive. And now it's my turn, to remind you. You spent all that time being my strength. You brought us together, remember Doctor? And life found a way for us, the three of us. I'm still here. And I need you too. Your family needs you. It'll be different this time." I watch the color rise to her cheeks. "This time I'm meant to carry your children as it ought to be, yeah? Now that I'm... like you and Alina? I mean, I know the TARDIS made me this way, but I've got all the parts. So it should work, yeah?"

"Yes."

She opens up her arms to me, but I shake my head and kiss her womb again. "You know, Doctor, it was you that taught me it's okay to be afraid as long as you don't let it keep you down. Those are our dreams, right there, under your head. And we're gonna fight for them, just as we have for all of our dreams, like we did for Alina. Nothing will stop you, will it Doctor? Not the best dad in the universe, not my husband, right Doctor?"

"Quite right," I gurgle with a smile. "We're in this together."

"Always," Rose adds with a brush of her thumb across my lips. "Oh go on, say it. You'll feel better."

"It's not strictly -"

"No technicalities. Just say it. Remember, when you told me I was like the brightest star? What if we're a constellation? How long would we last? Tell me like you did that day, before Alina was born. You believed it then."

"Forever, always," I sigh.

"And we'll fight for it, if we need to, just like we always have. That's what we do in this family, isn't it, Doctor?"

Rose more than warms my hearts. She sets them ablaze. "Yes," I hiss, and peer up into her fiery eyes. "I love you." How much love can I convey in one gaze and so few words? Never enough.

She nods at me. "Tell them, too. Your children."

I do, of course. Our song is longer now, since I added a verse for Alina. I wonder then, as I feel my hearts calming down, how long this song will be if I add a verse for each child Rose and I might someday have. We might be here a while.

**Author's Note:**

> Additional A/N: This is going to end up being the prologue for another fic in this 'verse.


End file.
